that is expected to start and 9:45. 2, we will be in new york city for the annual reading of the names killed. the pentagon3, memorial service. we will re-air all the ceremonies tomorrow night on the c-span networks. host: put e-verify in context because of that case. guest: this was a terrible case out of iowa that we have been hearing about the last couple

weeks. a 20-year-old college student, mollie tibbetts was out for a jog. she was apprehended. she went missing and when they were able to find somebody in charge of the murder, that person, christian rivera, ended up being an undocumented immigrant from mexico. he had been working at a nearby farm in brooklyn, iowa. the derry -- a dairy farm out there. they had tried to run a check on this guy to make sure he was available to work in this country. there was back and forth over the process they used and that ended up he had allegedly given a false and an education to get his work there it's. what that case has done is drop attention to the fact that there are half of the people who work in the fields in the u.s. farms and ranches and nurseries are undocumented immigrants. the e-verify program has said the big light on the program, which is a federal system that

allows employers to check the immigration status for the worker authorization. databases toinst see if they are legally allowed to work. people are calling for that program to be nationalized. it is only required of federal government contractors and to some data -- degree in 24 states. , walkif i am an employer us through the process. guest: if somebody comes in, you run them through the usual hr paperwork. one thing everybody has to fill out as an i-9 form. they take that and run it to the e-verify system. you do it on your desktop. you put in the information given to you and the government runs that through the social security administration database and the department of homeland security database to see if there are any red flags. the person is given a

provisional period where he is allowed to work till the check is cleared. if a problem comes back, the worker is given time to rectify their record if there has been some problem. at some point, you are supposed to get a check to allow your worker to continue working. host: how often do somebody come back is unauthorized? guest: that is one of the rubs with this program. there have been several studies done that question how often it flags people undocumented. one study done in 2009 for the federal government, it turned out that 54% of undocumented immigrants run to the system were approved. that is because a lot of them were using stolen identities or identities they borrowed from relatives or friends. that study is old but we have not seen anything since updating the data but it shows there are big problems and these numbers can get big.

there are over 30 million e-verify checks run in this country last year. 8000 companies are using this because they are required. we are talking big numbers. host: the e-verify system topic for our conversation with alan gomez. republicans: 202-748-8001 eastern time zones. you can also post thoughts on quit or -- twitter. what is typically the reaction from business owners about this system? do they embrace it? are they hesitant? guest: i think there is two reactions. there is a pretty broad agreement that there should be some system in this country to check if that person sitting in front of you is eligible to work.

so you do not have to run its to problems later if they turn out to be undocumented and the question of whether you knowingly hired someone or not. there is some agreement that some system like e-verify is made better should be there. but especially in industries that rely knowingly are not on the undocumented population. there is resistance. industry,icultural which is what we are focusing on in this story, they are arguing if you implement e-verify tomorrow, a lot of their workforce is going to disappear quickly and that is going to affect their businesses and consumer prices and have a snowball effect. they say they need a workable system or they are allowed to bring in foreign laborers to work the harvest and fields because they cannot find enough american workers to do those jobs. they say they can take it.

, butey implement e-verify expand our guest worker program. if they can get the workers they need, once they are driven to the e-verify program. host: in the mollie tibbetts case, what is the, but expand our guest worker liabilid legal recourse? guest: iowa is not a state that requires all employers to use e-verify so there is no legal obligation for the owners of that farm to use this system. they voluntarily -- at first they said they had been using e-verify. turns out the person who ran the checks was using a different throughhere you can run the social security administration, make sure a name and d.o.b. matchup. that does not check the other things we're talking about. there is no liability. they were not required to run

somebody to the e-verify system. they willafter this, proactively begin using the program because they want to ensure all future workers they hire around to the system properly. to thehen it comes states that have the system, how many states compared to the rest of the united states? guest: right now it is 24 states that require some businesses to use e-verify. some cases, for the most part our state contractors. some work for the state the government -- state government. the larger businesses, the universitythe larger businessese university systems and some of the states are required to use. they have taken different approaches and implements desperate women to different rules but there are 24 states using it now. there is always talk about expanding that. in 2010, when arizona passed its 1070 lawon law, the sb

that raised headlines, and that several states followed suit, that is when a lot of them started adopting e-verify. we are up to 24 states. host: this is buffalo, kentucky. james, you're on with our guest. caller: thank you for c-span. also, i welcome y'all's guest. thank you. host: you are on. caller: thank you for c-span and thank you for your guest. here is how i feel. illegalothing against immigration. i'm not a racist. toeel if you should come in this country illegally, it would -- should be a ten-year sentence. the liberals should be paying for it. and i am talking paying my heart taxes. and another thing. the liberals, it is ok for

people to die. i lost a brother to an illegal. the liberals are like, well as long as it does not happen to my family. happen, you got what you asked for. host: do you have a question directed to that? caller: that is the thing too. you should use e-verify and the reason why people do not go out and work, is because it is temporary and they do not pay enough. i do not care what they say. there's not enough money. the farmers are making out like a bandit. the farmer is making out like a bandit and as greedy as all get out. host: pick from that as you wish. guest: my condolences to your family for whatever happens there, but several issues there. when it comes to when you talk about the greed when it comes to

farmers, now we have a program that is the main visa that employers used to bring in guest workers to work in agriculture. in that case, what is happening is that program requires employers to show that they are paying a decent wage and that they have advertised that job. and that they have done it extensively. i have sat down with farmers. they have to post the job in local newspapers. they have to post in state employment board websites and get the word out that they have advertised it as much as they could and could not find anybody to work it. this is run to the department of labor. there is a check the department of labor runs whenever these pieces are being applied for to ensure they are not paying under minimum wage or cheap prices.

the mechanism that is in the process that they are trying to ensure, that if you bring a guest worker, you are paying a decent wage. that program has a lot of flaws and it is something congress needs to get into an something congress needs to improve to to improve to ensure the kind of things you are talking about. hearing from pam in florida, go ahead for -- ahead. caller: you said 54% of a successfullyrants run through the system using friends and family id, so my first question is, how would you know that? my second question is, use of the study was done in 2009. why has there not been anything more recent? guest: two good questions. study was run by a private company that was doing

pork for u.s. citizenshi services. they did a follow-up study in 2012, but they did not cite that statistic in that report and ever since, there has not really been that big of a push to law in thisify country which means agencies have not spent as much time analyzing the program. we are all waiting to see a good update on the success of the program, the flaws, and how much is been corrected. three steps, create a st, close thet co case -- how long is that transaction? guest: it could take a couple of minutes. checkit, you get a green

but comes back and the vast majority of cases, that's what happens. 99% ofike 90% or e-verify checks come back with that check mark to allow a person to start working for -- working. you're a tentative, nonconfirmation, a tnc, that tells the employer there is something wrong here than that is on the employee to go deal with the social security administration, deal with the federal agencies responsible for clearing up their record to clear up whatever discrepancy there is so they can be approved. or if they are using stolen identification, and many cases, that person goes to another company or if we're talking about unscrupulous employers, they will find another identification for that person to use.

host: from kentucky, ron, go ahead. caller: i have used e-verify for years and i wanted to bring out a couple of points. blamed e-verify for the incident but if theed, employer had used a valid drivers license which has a photo id and makes sure that person was who it said it was on the valid drivers license, you cannot blame e-verify when the couldoyed -- employer of been able to make sure the person in the drivers license valid id photo matched up with the person sitting in front of them. that was one thing. i am not sure how we tied in tidbits of the tragic death into the employer-immigration thing.

there was some 30,000 people killed by guns in the last 12 months, and nobody is talked about that but they did want to bring up this one issue. guest: it is really interesting what he is saying. -- there is a lot of questions about how much rononsibilty somebody like should have in the determining of someone in front of them. the way the law is written, if ged,s blatantly for their responsibility to turn that person down, but there are a lot of good forgeries out there and it is very difficult and asking a lot of employers to be the first line of defense when it comes to these things. there are a lot of steps in the e-verify process, but that is

one of the things they are looking at when they talk about improving and making modifications. on the second point, the reason we are talking about this and the reason molly case became as prominent as it did is because within a minute of the farm owner -- the law-enforcement official announcing the arrest, as soon as he said that rivera was in the country immediately, we heard the ramifications. huckabee saying that shows how sanctuary cities are discouraging and we need to crack down. president trump cited the case in a broader discussion about illegal immigration and the dangers posed. the reason it is on our front page this morning is because republicans were very quick to

make this an issue. a of them brought it back to 2016 in a very similar but different case with the woman who was -- died in san francisco and an undocumented immigrant was suspected in her murder. it was very important for us to provide

>> it was monumental growth over the past decade. a lot of it has to do with states passing laws requiring companies to use the program. one of the things that happens is employers, especially industries like agriculture and construction that are heavy with undocumented immigrants, a lot

of them will voluntary -- voluntarily sign up. some say they do under pressure from the federal government who threatened to raid their nursery or farm, so the employer, in an attempt to avoid these raids that we see them a coming back under the trump administration, they will sign up for the program, war under the obama administration, they would refer to i9 audits. george w. bush used high-profile work rates. obama monitored these companies and check out the i9's, and those kinds of audits can make it difficult for them to continue their normal operations to operate without that cloud of uncertainty. a lot of them take that garland terry stuff, if i sign up for e-verify, will you get off my back? a lot of companies want to sign

up so that they are trying to abide by these rules and stay away from a federal audit or one of these big raids where they round up workers. gomez joining us. michael from alabama, go ahead. caller: in my opinion, the illegals wouldn't want to work for these low wages on the rms if the liberals would push a living wage on the farmers instead of trying to push for a living wage in mcdonald's and taco bell and all these other places. pay them a decent wage, and, you know, as long as the u.s. chamber of commerce and the business